Saturday, December 24, 2016

I wanted to end the year with a series of profound and clever utterances, but I can't. Others have already said what I wanted to say. Others have already noted the many obvious things that have happened in 2016.

In our little corner of the world it seems like things have been anything but fine and good.

English friends who live in south-western France experienced something traumatic when L's (I'll use letters in place of names) hip failed. We hear they're OK, but life was in a moment changed.

In our French/English conversation group we've made quite a few friends. An American couple whose families are involved in US politics and international diplomacy are facing challenges around R's cancer. We hear it may be a treatable form and can only hope for the best. They're not coming back to Paris until this is resolved.

A couple we spent Sainte-Sylvestre with realized the seriousness of their challenges when C was diagnosed with metastasized cancer. We're not sure how much life is left in this wonderful human being and it makes us feel sad just thinking about it.

In our apartment building, a couple with whom we've shared a few aperos haven't had all that great a time, either. T's mother very recently passed away and things have been rather quiet chez eux.

A couple who we are close with have had a terrible year. First J's brother was diagnosed with cancer and died. Then J's sister came down with something terminal. These were followed all too quickly by M's (J's spouse) stroke and subsequent need of a pacemaker.

It feels like we're all falling apart.

No, not everything this past year has been horrible. Still, it's the negative things in life that seem play so strongly on our thoughts, feelings, and memory.

Thursday, December 8, 2016

Our favorite super-bio Bordeaux vintner wasn't at the salon, but they sent an email saying they would, however, be at an all-bio salon the following weekend. I noted the dates, printed the invitation, and when the open day arrived, Jude and I headed off to le carreau du temple. Only to find that they were still setting up. My mistake was to assume (yes, I'm an ass, and you can fill in the rest of that statement) that Friday was when it started. No. It was Saturday through Monday. We got busy over the weekend and I came down with a cold, so we didn't return to le carreau. Oh well.

We thought we found a place here in the city that's located over in the 14eme. Yet when we visited them they had one, maybe two wines indicated "no sulfites added". Further, none of the wines on offer were labeled "bio". Jude tried a few things and bought a few bottles and gave up on them when she found bio sans sulfites ajoutés over at our local Monoprix.

In the past three years of visiting the huge salon des vignerons independent with our Teacher of All Things Wine I've developed an understanding of how the French talk about their regions, their cepages (grape varieties), their soils, their production methods, and modes and methods of distribution. I'm beginning to hear all the words in a conversation, know what they mean, and am starting to ask semi-intelligent pre-cro magnon man level questions. This is how Jude and I were able to be more successful in selecting wines at this years salon. A grunt here. A scratch there. Et voila!

A couple of days after behaving like the Old Man that I am by confusing dates for the All Dancing All Bio salon we read something interesting over on the Local. It turns out the article might just have given us the last and most valuable piece of the Understanding Wines in France puzzle.

Apparently winegrowers in this part of the world can be just as crazy, or as the article calls it - extreme - as their American Klickitat Canyon counterparts. Here is an immigrant, here is a man from Japan no less (they love beer in Japan), here is a steep steep hillside that's been cleared and planted, here are the bare feet that crush the grapes, here is the airborne yeast that starts the fermentation, here is the lanyard that holds the Japanese man upright should he pass out from too much CO2 off-gassing from the crush, and here is the finished product.

I have to say, most syrah cepages we've drunk have been rather odd. They can be cloyingly cough-syrup-py. They can be slightly sweet. They have often been rather unbalanced. They can have what I'll call a strange nose. Most are best suited for wine-ing rats into oblivion.

Independent of what we've felt about syrah, these rats (my wife and I) were piqued by the article. We had to try some Domaine des Grandes Collines. But where to procure something as obscure as le canon rouge? *tippity-tap-tap-tap* went the clavier and... hmmm... in the city of Paris... yes... I see... yes... there is one and only one store that could, that might, that remotely possibly cross your fingers and hope to die offer le canon. You guessed it. Might they have a bottle or two at la cave des Papilles?

Well. Alrighty, then. Off I go...

... and home I returned. With a bottle. They had one in stock for the attractive price of only 11Euro.

*pop* and out came the cork on le canon. Into a glass with just a little bit... and... well... the color is beautiful, actually... plenty of leg... *sniff* Oh my... are we sure this is a syrah?... ummm... this is beautiful, too... *sip* ... oh... *sip* ... my... *sip* ... gawd!... *sublime* This can't be, can it?

Et voila! we've discovered the very thing we started looking for over four and a half years ago when we first moved here: An all natural no yeast no sulfite-added made by a madman wine worth drinking nearly every night of the year.

Two trips later we have purchased what's likely 50% of la cave's allotment (caution: I exaggerate, it's true).

For those of you who know French wines like nobodies business, please correct me where I'm wrong. But if it's too painful to read (I drink beer, remember?), feel free to cover your eyes, block your ears, and scream into a pillow while I'm not looking. For the rest of you, here's what I've learned about finding a great organic wine just about anywhere in France.

1) What you're after is something with less than 20 parts per million of sulfur dioxide (SO2, aka - sulfites). The UC Davis chemically engineered approach to winemaking typically uses far more SO2 than 30ppm.

2) Bio is "organic" in France. But that's not enough and they use the words slightly differently than you do in the States. If you attend un salon des vignerons just look for an indication that a vintner's wine is "bio" or "biodynamic." These words have caught on here in France and are more than just a marketing exercise. The much dreaded by the English EU bureaucrats in Brussels and Strasbourg carefully legislate anything that might cross country borders.

3) Mais, et il y a toujours un mais, you may be overlooking or as in my case simply didn't know about a huge lake of fabulous wines that haven't been put through the EU's bio food certification process, and yet are more "extreme" in the care and attention given to the EU bio labeled plonk.

Here is all you need to ask for - vin nature. These are fermented with airborne naturally occurring yeasts only.

If you're neurotic or want to make the guy or gal behind the counter smile and giggle feel free to ask which pesticides were sprayed on the grapes. I've yet to find one that has had anything more than an SO2 bomb lit off in the fields on cold cold nights (to keep the molds from spreading too quickly).

If you're sensitive to SO2 like Jude (headaches, flushing red in the face, etc.) simply ask about what the vintner measured. I've yet to find a vin nature with more than 20ppm SO2. Many, or dare I say most, that we've tasted have less than 15ppm SO2. In either event, such dosages are well under anything Jude reacts to.

The Wine Season started with a pleasant bang. Remember the nouveau Beaujolais I posted an image of recently? Well, it turns out the nouveau B's of my youth were indeed sh*t. The stuff on offer here is, quite frankly, FABULOUS! No need to age wines. Nope. None at all. My internal compass for what's good and what's not, vise a vis my expectations, has been appropriately re-calibrated.

To le salon with friends - Night One

The Wine Season quickly reached Full Bellow just the past weekend. This year le salon des vignerons independent held their vast Wine Selling Spree in Salle Trois à la porte de Versailles. More than nine hundred vinters showed up to hawk their wares. Imaginez vous, nine flipp'n hundred stands offering free tastes of wines and liquors. I said free and I meant what I just said. It's a very dangerous place to visit and they won't make things more difficult for you, either. They hand you a cute little tasting glass, at no cost, free, nothing, pas de sou, when you enter Salle Trois. Gods! Be still my quivering liver. It took three visits to properly cover the event.

Day One was actually Night One in that we visited the salon after sundown. In the process of walking around the show we purchased cartons of our favorite cremant d'Alsace. We uncovered a second crement, it's something fun (Pinot Noir and a couple other cépages) from le Bourgogne. All we needed to do was to collect them the next day when le diable was at hand.

We went with friends. We laughed and had a good time. On the more serious side, they taught me about les pineau de Charentes. I'd been looking for something tasty to supplement our rapidly and seriously dwindling Coelho Porto supplies that were provisioned from the Porto Institute in Lisboa last March. Deborah may have just introduced to us a good French supplement.

With our teacher of wine - Day Two

Day Two quickly arrived with a call from Jacky. Whenever I visit le salon with him I learn so many things that I can't keep it all straight. This year was no different. We worked our taste buds down le Bourgogne and concentrated our attention on the whites. The Big Names like Gevry, Chassagne-Montrachet, et Meursault all called to us and were duly sampled.

Sorting through the various vineyards was a very enlightening exercise. I knew these were cent pourcent Chardonnay. Yes, there were small differences between each of the vineyards. Yes, the better plonk came from the tops of the hills. Yes, the clay or limestone soils influenced the taste. But... and yet... I wasn't Blown Away by any of it. Sure, some of it was pretty good. Particularly the 30Euro bilge-plonk. But...

We Ping-Ponged our way down the aisles. After tasting a particularly good Meursault, Jacky spied something across the way. Over we went and he proceeded to explain to me where this vineyard was from. It's just north of Beaune in an area with what they call a mountain (though it's more likely a nice big hill of some kind or other). Around this "mountain" are several vineyards. This particular vinter owned three plots. So we tried a little white from each of these three.

Explaining how a "mountain" is surrounded with different

vineyards and plots - Day Two

Into our glasses went the first taste. To the lips came our portions. *swirl* *swish* *inhale* Jacky had a radiant look on his face when I asked him que penses tu? He raised my eyes to the heavens and said one single word. "Sublime" C'est tout qu'il peut dire. Finally we found something of note. From my side all I could think was how interesting it was to have passed through some of the very best vineyards in the world to stumble upon something truly spectacular from a vintner who may not be known outside France. Je prends trois bouteilles, s'il vous plaît. Et le même pour mon ami.

Loading up le diable with quatre cartons de crement plus the three Ladroix we were off and headed for home. That's then disaster struck. Le diable shed a roulant and I was nearly dead in the water. There I stood with nearly ninety pounds of wine. Ugh. What to do? As we were only half a block from the apartment I lifted/drug the poor dying diable home. No crement was spilled. Nous avons eu de la chance. Except for the sore back. The things we suffer for, right?

How le salon is laid out.

There were 9 aisles like this.

Each aisle holds more than 100 vintners hawking their wares.

Yes.

It's true.

This was photographed half way down one of them.

The other half is behind me.

Vasty tracts of vin, me-thinks.

In preparation to Day Three at le salon I was up and out early the next morning to acquire a new diable. Suitably diable equipped Jude and I returned to le salon to find her a few vins rouge. But this was no easy task. It turns out the reds of le Bourgogne are terribly expensive and, well, they don't taste all that great. I know. *shock* *horror* *gnashing of teeth* Same with les vins de Bordeaux. Ugh. What to do? The two "greatest" red wine regions in the world (according to well paid marketers) and nothing appealed to us.

I remembered something our wine teacher said two days prior. When I told him what Judith liked he suggested the cabernet franc of Chinon from the Loire. So off we went and, guess what? Jacky is right. Several vintners were approached. Two good vindages were located (for an amazingly low price). A couple cartons were purchased and we finished off our visit by adding to the haul a carton of Rhone and one of the Languedoc-Roussillon. Le nouveau diable est charge and to home and hearth we went.

I moved les crements into le cave and rearranged our upstairs cave (aka closet) to take les vins rouge. We're nearly fully stocked for the year. Life is good.

About Me

Christopher
Mark Perez is a retired software engineering program manager,
specializing in uncovering the most interesting experiences life can
offer while living with his lovely wife, Judith, in Paris, France.
When seeking relief from the long and arduous task of retirement,
this American ex-patriot haunts the edges of ancient philosophies,
rich cultures, and fascinating societies to express and share images
as art by avidly pursuing photography. He occasionally stands-in as
a photo-educator at a local Anglophone society, too. Spicy, flavored
and strongly favored image making themes include thickly textured,
darkly rich Noir Victorian Gothic, Dark Romanticism, Rococco and
Steampunk, Tribal Fusion Bellydance subjects.